6296 Results for “Open ”
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“We Go from 16mm to Super 16 to 35mm”: Alice Rohrwacher on La Chimera
Italian filmmaker Alice Rorhwacher’s puckish and scintillatingly tactile fourth feature is her most ambitious to date. Once again dramatizing the conflicting ideals of modernity and tradition, past and present, Rohrwacher continues to pay debt to forebears of Italian cinema like Ermanno Olmi while also infusing her film with a symbolic surrealism and neo-realist class consciousness reminiscent of the respective likes of Pier Paolo Pasolini Roberto Rossellini. La Chimera follows English archaeologist Arthur (Josh O’Connor), who possesses a mystical ability to divine the location of subterranean treasures. Freshly released from prison, he reunites with a band of tombaroli (essentially grave robbers) […]
by Elissa Suh on Mar 27, 2024 -
Critic’s Notebook: CPH:DOX 2024
After a few days at CPH:DOX 2024, the main lesson was not to know what to expect: the range of documentary approaches felt vast, and each filmmaker’s commitment tended to be rewardingly total. The 21st edition of the springtime Copenhagen festival screened 200-plus titles across several venues, with personal favorites including the Empire Bio in Nørrebro and the sanctum-like cinematheque at the Danish Film Institute. And if one of the strongest recommendations I have for any festival is that I would have felt deprived of a complete picture of the year’s work if I hadn’t seen its selections, then indeed […]
by Nicolas Rapold on Mar 27, 2024 -
Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival 2024: European Disunion
One of the world’s leading forums for nonfiction work, this year the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival became a lightning rod for extremist rage. As widely reported, the opening night world premiere of Greek filmmaker Elina Psykou’s Stray Bodies happened under the watch of riot police amid a temporary ban on public protests after the film’s controversial poster — an image of a topless pregnant woman nailed to a cross —set off right-wing and religious figures and generated a volley of threats. The film also premiered in the wake of a massive public protest in support of a transgender couple that […]
by Steve Dollar on Mar 26, 2024 -
“All You Can Do is Give Your Offering” George MacKay, Back To One, Episode 284
You know the gifted actor George MacKay from films like 1917 or True History of The Kelly Gang. Now he has given us two absolutely incredible performances in Femme (in select theaters now) and The Beast (out on April 5th). On this episode, he takes us into his process of inhabiting these two extremely different characters. He explains why context is becoming more and more important to him in his preparation, talks about the actor as storyteller, the secret to appearing truly menacing, those sex scenes in Femme, a lesson about respect that he learned from Eddie Marsan, and much […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Mar 26, 2024 -
A Conversation with Luke Lorentzen from Mary Lampson’s The Cutting Room (A Work in Progress)
The following conversation is an excerpted chapter from The Cutting Room, an upcoming book by documentary film editor Mary Lampson tracing the story of a woman building a life and career as an editor in an industry hostile to both women and independent filmmaking. Traveling over the decades through massive changes in documentary storytelling and filmmaking technology, the book revisits her work with some of the great talents of the documentary form while chronicling major technological changes connected directly to her brother Butler Lampson’s groundbreaking work on the development of the personal computer. In a moment when the conversation about documentary film feels all too […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 25, 2024 -
“It’s a Confusing World That We Inhabit”: Ryan Martin Brown on Free Time
In Free Time, writer-director-producer Ryan Martin Brown’s debut feature, directionless office drone Drew (comedian Colin Burgess) decides to quit his job. After all, the position is hardly fulfilling (nor is he particularly gifted at it), and why spend all day bleary-eyed behind a screen when all that New York City has to offer exists just outside the door? Soon enough, Drew’s naive work-life musings are proven to be drivel, and his joblessness puts a mighty strain on his few remaining social relationships. His WFH roommate Rajat (Rajat Suresh) doesn’t seem thrilled with Drew’s daytime presence in the apartment, nor does […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 22, 2024 -
“If There are Esoteric Titles in the List, the Unfortunate Thing is That They are Esoteric at All”: Sean Price Williams on 1000 Movies
The debut release from Metrograph Editions, Sean Price Williams‘s 1000 Movies is just that — a list of 1,000 movies seen and appreciated in some way by the director/cinematographer, listed chronologically across its 6″ x 4.25″ pages. There is much white space. Not included is any kind of foreword, such as a personal essay explaining the project’s genesis. (For that, you’ll have to look to interviews such as this one, or Matt Folden’s on the Metrograph site.) There are no Letterboxd-style ratings, no film stills, and not even an author bio; there’s just Lizzie Harper’s drawing up front of an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 21, 2024 -
True/False Film Fest 2024: Creative Subjects
“Are you getting what you want, bitch?” Philly Abe, the focus of Elizabeth Nichols’s Flying Lessons, repeatedly offers similarly styled examples of “director-subject negotiations,” in which the latter grumbles before giving the former what they want, now with the added gift of self-reflexive dramatic tension. Director-subject relations are currently an especially fashionable topic (cf. the recent, clearly-titled film Subject); at this year’s True/False Film Fest, Flying Lessons provided its most interesting treatment. Abe is presented first as a representative of a vibrant and unprofessionalized ’80s downtown NYC arts scene but has an equally important relationship to the filmmaker, whose presence […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 20, 2024 -
Critic’s Notebook: The 2023 Red Sea International Film Festival
A series of miles-long empty dirt lots lie wedged between the Ritz Carlton and the Red Sea Mall, the two primary venues of the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Barren, with all signs of previous inhabitation fully erased, the site of the future Jeddah central district is a curious sight in the middle of a city of four million. When completed in 2027, it will be the cultural, industrial and touristic center of the city; for now, as endless empty space, it’s such a vertigo-inducing sight of rapid construction and development that it’s impossible to imagine anything […]
by Joshua Bogatin on Mar 19, 2024 -
“There Is an Acceptance that Is Happening with Me Right Now Where I Just Only Care About Doing the Work”: Lukas Gage, Back To One, Episode 283
Lukas Gage is on a roll. In shows like The White Lotus, Euphoria, You, and the latest season of Fargo, films like How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Down Low (which he also co-wrote), and now the eagerly anticipated Road House reboot, he’s been able to display his immense talent and range. He’s even played himself in Gossip Girl and The Other Two. On this episode, he explains how sometimes doing the opposite of what’s described is beneficial in an audition, why over-directing doesn’t work for him, the importance of creativity for the actor, how he arrived at his current […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Mar 19, 2024
